The ABA Journal recently published an article about Civility and the Cost of Incivility in the legal profession. It is a shame that our industry must deal with this topic however it is good to see it garnering attention. The actual article is quite lengthy and addresses topics such as reasons for the apparent increase in civility issues in the legal industry, how some in the profession are responding to the issues, how some are using “Show Cause Hearings” in response to incivility, and Ethics or Professionalism Training. Some of the article addresses issues in Florida and changes made in the legal oath in response to civility situations.

At Mario, Gunde, Peters, Rhoden & Kelley we have a high standard of professionalism and expect not only our own attorneys and staff to conduct their business at this level but also expect our dealings with other firms, professionals, and clients to be of the highest possible level of civility.

MJC: Am I reading this right Ken? He thinks fingerprints should be limited b/c they could be similar?? I thought we all had exclusive prints like DNA?? Am I wrong??Ken: The judge will allow fingerprint evidence to be presented to the jury but will not allow the fingerprint expert to say it “matches” the Defendant’s prints only that they are similar. From a strictly scientific point of view this is a correct ruling, however courts have allowed testimony that prints “match”.DY: whats next throwing out confessions, oh wait they do that already, video tapes of the crimes, they could throw them out……Ken: The area of false confessions is fascinating to me as innocent people sometimes confess where they have nothing to gain and the questioning seems non coercive. Then there are confessions made up by jail inmates and traded to the gullible. So yes, some “confessions” should be excluded from evidence.

The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in September 1996 by President Clinton. Under DOMA, as the act is known, no U.S. state must recognize a same-sex marriage from any other state. In fact section 3 of the law codifies “non-recognition” of same-sex marriages for all federal purposes, such as insurance benefits for government employees, Social Security survivors’ benefits, and the filing of joint tax returns.

On May 31, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued a unanimous ruling on DOMA and became the first federal appellate court to rule the law unconstitutional.

Just in the last few days, local conservative radio host, Bill Mick, released his popular How I Plan to Vote commentary. This article gives listeners and local residents his personal voting choices with some of the reasoning behind them. Bill is an involved member of the community, a conservative, and a very popular local radio personality on WMMB.

Bill released his vote choices for every race from the US level, to the state, circuit, and local levels.

“This is a question of which lawyer is best equipped to be the CEO of criminal defense in our area. Blaise Trettis is a career Public Defender and currently manages in the office. Ken Rhoden has worked in that office and in private practice. I prefer the business experience over bureaucracy in this case. I believe a new set of eyes managing the office will serve Brevard and Seminole better than more of the same. Ken Rhoden gets my vote.”

The post interview video is very interesting for several reasons such as 1) Blaise did not know the budget method his own office uses, 2) Blaise lied in this video saying he is a first time candidate then backtracks with excuses about his campaign in 2008, and 3) Blaise clearly opposes improvements to the criminal rules of procedure that he doesn’t use nor seem to even understand.